


Dappled Light

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Community: where_no_woman, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kathryn takes B'Elanna to see the caves of Olympus Mons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dappled Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> This story contains references to events detailed in Jeri Taylor's ST:VOY novel _Mosaic_ , though knowledge of that is not required for understanding.

It was B’Elanna’s choice, this time, and she chose Mars. Kathryn – and it still felt strange to call her that, even mentally, even in the weeks that had passed since this thing between them coalesced into something more tangible than B’Elanna’s occasional hope – Kathryn had programmed an impressively accurate replica of the subterranean caves of Olympus Mons, the place she’d been diving a couple of times when she was a girl. She’d first shown it to B’Elanna months ago, when she was still perfecting the details, going so far as to access original expedition logs and the specs in the Starfleet database to aid the images supplied by her memory. They’d intended to explore it properly soon after that, but then there had been the Enarans, then Kathryn’s spiritual quest to help Kes, and then Henry Starling, and they had only just now found time to pause long enough to catch their breath, let alone even think about R&R.

But they’d been out there long enough to know that the calm was rare and precious, so when Kathryn strode into Engineering, slid a warm palm against her shoulder blade and asked her if she’d like to see the caves, B’Elanna didn’t hesitate to say yes.

And it was here, B'Elanna thought, where things could start to get difficult, because no one had forced her into this situation. She’d _chosen_ to be here. She wanted to be here; that was why she'd delegated her routine diagnostic to Harry, bored in Ops as _Voyager_ coasted past one unpopulated planet with unbreathable atmosphere after the next, and gladly gone with Kathryn when she'd asked. And she didn't regret it; far from it, in fact: even though she didn't have a great deal of diving experience, it felt good to be in the water, to stretch her muscles out in a way she didn't normally. It felt even better than good to do it with Kathryn beside her, strong and lean and graceful, gesturing back with practised ease as they swam deeper.

But they’d reached their destination, now, the rocky ledge that jutted out above the water just inside the mouth of the cave, and they were left sitting there, slowly drying, in an artificial environment where silence bounced around the walls and the space between them, hollow and dense and amplified all at once. B'Elanna wondered if she was thinking about this too much; Kathryn, for her part, seemed perfectly comfortable as she sorted through the food she'd carried in watertight containers in her pack.

 _We could always replicate something in the holodeck_ , she'd said, _but that would detract from the authenticity of the experience_. It hadn’t escaped B’Elanna’s attention, the wistful note in her voice, the mindfulness of one more Alpha Quadrant reality they couldn’t reach, and B'Elanna had told her that that would be fine so long as she didn't try to feed her anything resembling Leola-root stew.

Kathryn seemed content not to talk, now, as she unpacked her “traditional picnic food,” bread and cheese and strawberries and caramel brownies, not as good as her mother’s, she said, but modified by trial and mostly error to be bearable, if not a substitute. “Here you go,” she murmured, smiling as she passed a plate of food across to B’Elanna. Her voice was stark against the stillness of the water, as stark as her skin, and B’Elanna stared for a moment too long before Kathryn caught her gaze and she glanced away, discovered and more embarrassed than she should be.

She wished she were better at this. She was usually better at this, but there was a weight about the uncertainty of the uncharted territory – emotionally, physically, practically – that had her losing her grip on her sensibilities. It didn’t help that seeing Kathryn like this, all casual abandon, long hair straggling over her forehead in slow-dripping wayward strands, was sending fire-bright shots of pure _want_ through B’Elanna’s bloodstream.

She took a deep breath, tried to disguise it as an intake of her surroundings; sitting here, doing nothing, resisting the premature and impolitic urge to _touch_ (especially now that she knew it might be something other than entirely unwelcome) was rapidly climbing her mental list of Least Favourite Activities. What she wouldn't give to be stranded on a hostile alien moon right now, preferably one with dreadful conditions so she could busy her hands and her mind with something significant and pressing, like trying to pitch an emergency comm signal through an ion storm before she was captured. Or killed.

The silence was almost jeering, just challenging her to break it, and if there was one thing B’Elanna couldn’t ever resist it was a challenge. She swallowed around a strawberry, cleared her throat and said, “When was the last time you came here? On Mars, I mean?”

“I was a teenager,” Kathryn replied, “and I’d just found out I’d been accepted into Starfleet Academy.” She looked over at B’Elanna and smiled, lopsided and coy. “Naturally I wanted to celebrate hundreds of feet below the ground with oxygen tanks.”

“Well, of course.” B’Elanna offered her a smile that Kathryn took and returned ten-fold; B’Elanna busied herself with pouring coffee.

“My high school sweetheart and I came down here – or down there, I suppose I should say – but he was in a dreadful huff because he’d missed out on Academy acceptance, so he was doing his best to make me miserable.” Kathryn gestured with a stalk of celery, folding her legs beneath her in a way that, added to her unkempt, undried hair and her lack of uniform, made her look a bit like the schoolgirl she was recalling. “There was some excitement with a scientific discovery – or what I thought was a scientific discovery, anyway; silly, really, but I haven’t ever forgotten it, or this place.”

B’Elanna drew her knees up to her chest and held them loosely. “It must be very special to you.”

“It is,” Kathryn said. “It’s not—” she paused, cast an enigmatic half-smile across at B’Elanna. “It’s not the kind of place I’d share with anyone.”

B’Elanna smiled back, warm all over, until she couldn’t anymore and she had to turn her focus determinedly onto her food.

But she was playing the words over in her mind (a little incredulous; more flattered; even more pleased) and she wondered at how many other places dotted around the Alpha Quadrant were special to Kathryn Janeway. Wondered which ones.

Dared, for a moment, to hope that she might one day learn.

*

It was sometime later when Kathryn stood and stretched languidly, arms in an arc above her head, and B’Elanna made less of an effort to drag her gaze away from the play of muscle, the angle of ribs, than she probably should have.

“Would you prefer to swim back up, or exit from here?”

“...I’m sorry? Oh, yes, I’d prefer to swim.” B'Elanna wedged the last of her utensils into her pack and swung it over her shoulder, grinning at Kathryn as she stood as well. “You’ve gone to the trouble to recreate this so well, and we’ve come so far—”

“It would seem a shame to waste it, wouldn’t it?”

“Absolutely.” B’Elanna raised her hand to fasten her breathing apparatus – she didn’t need it, of course, but it was all part of the experience, after all – and then turned to Kathryn and took a step forward. Then, “Race you back to the surface!” she cried, and promptly jumped in.

She heard Kathryn’s laughter, surprised but delighted, muffled but bright even through the water, and allowed herself a furious grin where she knew no one else could see.

*

The trip back up took longer, because it was slightly more strenuous work to push through the denser, darker water at the cave-mouth that it had been to propel their way down into it from above. But eventually the water grew thinner and clearer, the artificial sunlight more pronounced as it danced through the waves, and Kathryn surfaced a full body-length ahead of B’Elanna and hoisted herself up onto the rock before she flopped unceremoniously back down. B’Elanna followed, laughing, shaking the hair and the drops of water from her eyes as she rolled her shoulders, inhaled deeply, and glanced down.

Kathryn was watching her, right arm crooked and pillowed beneath her head, and the intensity on her face all but knocked the breath from B’Elanna’s lungs. They sat there, staring, locked in a moment that stretched and suspended in time, that could well have gone on forever had B’Elanna not grown suddenly all-too-aware of her racing blood, her pounding heart, her restless fingers. She was overwhelmed, saturated, and she needed to get out before the crushing weight of desire took her over.

She dragged her eyes away, a physical motion, and spoke with a throat too dry. “We should head back,” she said, softly. “We’ve been out here a long time; holodeck privileges, and all.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Kathryn murmured. “All I really want to do is have a sonic shower and settle down with a good book. Give my muscles a break for a couple of hours.” She shot her a grin as she pulled herself to her feet and then reached out to help B’Elanna, who took her hand with a concerted effort not to shiver at the contact.

B'Elanna hadn't realised until a recent moment of clarity – not so much a revelation as a quiet, suspiciously undramatic slide into understanding – that the awkward coil of nervousness she felt in the pit of her stomach when Captain Janeway was around was not the result of the other woman’s rank in Starfleet. It was attraction, of course, and after that everything made more sense. And B’Elanna had had no problem with that at all; had been mostly unfazed, in fact, until she noticed that sometimes, maybe, the captain might have been watching her, too. That sometimes, maybe, she might have met and held B’Elanna’s gaze for a moment too long, with a warmth or a smile that seemed to teeter somewhere just on the edge of suggestive. And then it got harder, because if B’Elanna had a chance – even remotely – then something was at stake and she had to be careful. She had to test the waters, so to speak (she thought with a smirk) and she had to do so in a way that wouldn’t find her being written up for insubordination or worse.

So the fact that they had come even this far, to the point of spending their off-time together, to Kathryn sharing stories of her life before Starfleet while smiling a brilliant, flirtatious smile B’Elanna hadn’t seen before, was the work of a kind of good fortune that escaped her. This was her chance, though, she knew, the two of them standing as they prepared to leave the holodeck with its artificial gravity and its artificial Mars and its artificial non-hierarchical structure; this was her chance to let Kathryn know what the last few hours had meant to her, to let her know that B’Elanna’s occasional hints of uncertainty did not in any way reflect her desire to be there now.

“I wanted to tell you, Cap – Kathryn,” B’Elanna half-laughed, self-conscious, “I had a good time. I really did, and I wanted to thank you for letting me see a place that's special to you.”

Kathryn nodded, listening, and B’Elanna sucked in a breath.

“I also wanted to apologise if my behaviour came across as – well, a little _strange_ , at all, I just—” she glanced up, took in Kathryn’s earnest eyes, the elegant crease of her questioning eyebrow, and felt her hand extend itself without her permission to stroke down the line of her cheekbone. “God,” B’Elanna murmured, “you’re so beautiful,” and then – horrified, mortified as she realised she’d said it out loud – she pulled back and looked away and hoped that the heat on her cheeks wasn’t nearly as visible as she suspected it to be. “I’m sorry.”

She felt long, nimble fingers closing warm around her forearm, gently urging. “B'Elanna?”

She turned, reluctantly, to find Kathryn not smiling with sympathy or pity but actually _grinning_ right at her, right there, blinding and so close that B'Elanna thought that she’d better step back, far away, because otherwise she was going to take a step in the other direction and just pull Kathryn’s body against her and—

“ _Relax_ ,” Kathryn said, and she cupped a hand around B’Elanna’s cheek, the pad of her thumb electric, and when B’Elanna whispered, “ _Please_ ,” she closed the distance.


End file.
